It would seem that my birthday has come early this year! I have been given an opportunity to put the Asus G71V gaming rig through its paces for four weeks and the timing couldn’t have been better.
I have a desktop PC that is getting seriously long in the tooth and I am keen to see how the G71V will fare, not only as a potential desktop replacement for my dinosaur, but also as a competent gaming machine capable of running today’s demanding games. To be honest, when I saw the choice of laptops available to review, there wasn’t even a debate – as this is the most powerful laptop Asus produces and given the spec of the G71V (more on that later), this was an easy choice. “I’ll take the Beast please!”
On opening the packaging, you are presented with the perfect gaming bundle. Not only do you get the G71V, you also get a top-notch Republic of Gamers backpack to ensure your gaming experience is portable and comfortable. A gaming mouse is also included, which is comfortable for righties and lefties and has programmable buttons to suit the individual user’s requirements.
Additionally, as you would expect, you get the power brick and cable, Windows Vista Ultimate Recovery DVD with relevant driver discs, WinDVD for Blu-ray, Nero 8 Essentials and Cyberlink Power2Go Disc burning software.
When you take the G71V out of its box, the first thing you notice is the size. Wow, it is big but not as big as I was expecting. The G71V is equipped with a sumptuous 17” WUXGA screen, as well as a near-full-size keyboard with a separate numeric keypad so you can expect it to overshadow other laptops you might have used before. As mentioned before, the specs of this machine are seriously impressive, starting with the blisteringly quick Intel Quad-Core Q9300 processor. You get 4GB of RAM, a whopping 1TB of storage (2 x 500GB drives) and an nVidia GeForce 9700M GT graphics card with 512MB RAM. What does all this mean? In a nutshell, what you have here is the Usain Bolt of the laptop world.
Throw in a Blu-ray DVD combo drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a built-in 2.0MP webcam, 8 in 1 card reader, Altec Lansing speakers with a subwoofer and what you have here is a seriously powerful machine, complete with a whole bunch of bells and a load of whistles!
Set-up is a doddle. Fire it up and you are confronted by a myriad of blue lights, LEDs and flashing logos with the most prominent of these being the Republic of Gamers logo on the G71’s lid. Republic of Gamers is the Asus commitment “to delivering the most innovative and best performing PC solutions to enhance the gaming experience of power users.” I’m looking forward to seeing how the G71V lives up to the Asus creed.
